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Meet
Jersey’s
Best Home
Chefs
TOP
PASTRY
CHEFS
+
Jersey & The Academy Awards
SWEET
SUCCESS
Top Pastry Chefs 2012
By t e r e s a p o l i t a n o
Photos by j o h n o ’ b oy l e
P
astry chefs, despite our national
obsession with sugar, often toil in
obscurity. That anonymity is changing,
thanks, in part, to the Cake Boss, Buddy
Valastro, and pastry challenges
on food TV. But it may shock you to learn
that most people don’t order dessert at
a restaurant. (We, of course, know of no
such people, so we must trust industry
research).
It’s a fact that presents a sort of sugary
Catch-22. Why bother with the luxury of
a pastry chef if few people order dessert?
And who is inclined to order dessert if it
is just the same-old, same-old?
Yet, dessert is the experience you take
out the door. An outstanding dessert
cements the memory and smooths over
any possible missteps during dinner.
Dessert, in other words, is critical,
and the meticulous and patient people
who create such signature sweets shall
not remain nameless. Here, then, are five
significant New Jersey pastry chefs you
ought to know — our Top Pastry Chefs
of 2012.
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DONNA
SARDELLA
Basilico
324 Millburn Ave., Millburn
(973) 379-7020
basilicomillburn.com
A
mid the swirl of outrageousness that has become
the world of modern pastry — the rock star
chocolates, the astronaut cakes, the cirque de
soleil confections — we have all but forgotten that
quiet era of sugary elegance. Call it the era of Le Cirque and
the Essex House, when pastry amazed, yes, but with delicacy,
sophistication, refinement. It’s the era of the Baked Alaska,
a triumph of cold and warm developed centuries before the
concept of molecular gastronomy entered and excited the
modern kitchen.
At Basilico in Millburn, Baked Alaska still reigns, traveling
to your table in a head-turning triumph of flame, brought
to you by pastry chef Donna Sardella, who hails from the
sophisticated and refined philosophies of Le Cirque and the
Essex House.
Basilico is the rare modern restaurant that offers dozens of
desserts; when she first began, Sardella was told her list was
too big to fit on the menu. But people love choice, she insists,
and the regulars like to try new things.
“Everybody’s on a diet, but everybody orders dessert.”
Basilico proves the idea that if you offer an excellent
dessert, people will order it.
Sardella is one of those pastry chefs who manages to
maintain a ballerina-like figure despite a day spent around
chocolate and sugar.
She’s also a walking Zen master for anyone with kitchenenvy. Her workspace is a tiny lopsided section of the Basilico
basement, and she frequently unplugs and rearranges the
portable freezer so she can maneuver from oven to counter
top. It’s in this remarkably tiny space that she makes the crisp
Napoleon, the creamy ricotta cheesecake, the strudel, the
zuppa inglese and a daily souffle.
As for fancy equipment? Sardella remembers some sage
pastry advice she received long ago: “The hardware store will
become your best friend.” She frequents the one in Millburn
for wooden dowels, for gardening shears, for X-acto knives.
They’re far less expensive — and far more useful — than the
tricked-out gear available at high-end culinary shops or art
supply stores.
When she goes out, she orders the most outrageous dessert
on the menu, but when she’s baking for the restaurant or
making cakes for a client, she takes a more classic approach.
“Even if I make a crazy cake, I like to refine it.” A lopsided
topsy-turvy cake, for example, comes with pearl drops and
sugar flowers, such as the one she has crafted for our cover
this month.
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She’ll be busy on Valentine’s Day, the sweetest day of the
year, when the restaurant offers a complimentary box of
truffles to its guests. But the very next day, she’ll be on a plane
for Puerto Rico. It’s a poignant trip, a trip she had planned to
take with her mother, who died of a rare cancer in October.
Sardella’s mom, the matriarch in a large Italian family who
loved any excuse to bake, started the whole love affair with
treats.
“We sneezed ... there was a party,” says Sardella, whose
childhood nickname was Sweet Tooth.